Pity the Dented Conscience

WE can always rely on the Guardian newspaper to provide some light entertainment, especially when it involves a half-hearted attempt by one of its inadvertently comedic journalists to account for the fact that this former bastion of ‘working-class’ sentiment is becoming increasingly more detached from its humble origins by the day.

Grace Dent, pictured with a left-leaning lobster and a bowl of sour grapes, informs us that she also comes from a ‘working-class’ background and apparently upset her mother some years ago by hiring someone to clean her house. In fact this poor woman is so utterly wracked with guilt for having betrayed her socio-economic antecedents that every Wednesday morning she feels the need to “clean the house for two hours before my cleaner arrives.”

Such are the trials and tribulations of your modern-day leftist, that Comrade Dent simply cannot cope with having employed a menial worker when she herself is nothing but a former prole. Not to mention the implications of having compromised with the dreaded patriarchy:

“One of the aspects of trying to have it all as a modern feminist blowhard is that another woman ends up lint-rollering cat hair off your sofa and harshly judging your slapdash method of Q-tip disposal.”

For more than ten years now, Gramsci Grace has been plumping-up the cushions on her leather sofa, polishing the coffee table and bleaching the toilet bowl before the hired drudge has even had a chance to reach the front door. She of dented grace cannot bear to stay at home when the house is being cleaned, either, and admits to sitting in a nearby café just to avoid the embarrassment of coming face to face with the archetypal figure of an incriminating Mrs. Mopp. As she explains:

“A painful attitude to domestic help is, I think, a fundamental aspect of being working class made good.”

I'm not quite sure how she justifies the notion that one can become superior to one's socio-economic peers merely by having enough money to employ them, but it doesn't really fit in with the views of old-school Marxists like E.P. Thompson, who argued that nothing less than common struggle can help us overcome class boundaries. Next time you're contemplating the overthrow of the Establishment, spare a thought for the unfortunate Grace Dent:

“All of the above things flood my mind every Wednesday as I flee the sound of my own vacuum cleaner. My kitchen surfaces have never been less smeary, but my conscience remains besmirched.”